The real stories from inside the F1 paddock

A press release that someone should have put out…

Communication is a word that comes from the Latin verb “commūnicāre”, which means “to share”. If there is an idea worth sharing, one shares it with other people. One communicates.

It strikes me that some of the folks who are involved in Formula 1 communication did not study Latin, and appear to believe that when the word Communication is stuck on their office door, it is a licence to sit around, doing their toenails, trimming their nose hair and drinking coffee, or simply gazing into space doing something called “strategic thinking”, which is really just a way to impress your boss while doing absolutely nothing. These people are fortunate in that the people employing them also have no idea about either Latin or communication…

Don’t get me wrong, there are some PR professionals working in F1, having proactive ideas and sending out good messages, although at the lower levels there are far too many of them who are simply gatekeepers to the stars, playing defence for the man with the ball…

There is no centralised communication in this messed up sport. The race promoters do their own thing, the series promoter does not seem to think it is his job to promote and the international federation sits in an ivory tower and does not seem to think that the sport matters, which is odd when one looks at the financials. The sport pays the bills for all the FIA ballrooms and canapés. It might be useful to treat it with some more respect.

The problem is that the people calling the shots know more about cabals and canapés than they do about vehicles and more specifically F1 cars. So there is a total vacuum in FIA and FOM communication about the sport. It is left to others to do – with no cheque in the post from either organisation.

Apart from a few bonkers hillbillies out there, the world believes, for one reason or another, that efficiency is a good thing. If we cannot find another way to stop ruining this world, we can at least slow down the process by which we destroy it. It is only logical to try to save this spec of dust to which we cling, the only known place where the human being can survive.

The world is filled with fabulous inventions but you have only to visit a place like Shanghai to know that pollution is not a good thing. Restricting what cars can do is deemed by some to be an affront to freedom. Everyone should be allowed to drive their fast cars all over the place, pumping out pollution, running over pretty flowers and killing rabbits wherever they go. That is what freedom is, yee ha! I would argue that perhaps freedom is better defined as being able to breathe clean air, and have our grandchildren do the same.

And this is what F1 is trying to help, in its own sweet way, while also providing spectacle and keeping thousands of people employed. Circuses and bread, just what the people want.

So what was the message that came out of Shanghai at the weekend? It was not the most exciting race in F1 history, but then that happens from time to time – and always has done.

What was most significant, if you ask me, was that if some idiot with the chequered flag had not waved it a lap too early, Lewis Hamilton’s race time over 56 laps in Shanghai would have been 1h36m52.810s. Compare that to last year and the year before and you will see that the race took about 26 seconds longer than it did in 2013 and 2012. Not even half a minute. In percentage terms, therefore, there was a loss of less than half a percent in terms of performance. In contrast, this result was achieved using around 33 percent less fuel.

Now that is what I call getting a better bang for your buck. And I’m willing to bet that by the end of the year the gap will have closed more and, perhaps, the races will be run even faster than they were 12 months ago.

Even more impressive was the fact that there were only two mechanical retirements this year, which is the same as last year, which gives one an idea of the reliability of the new cars and the professionalism of the people who build them. These folk really are the top guns of the automotive world.

So who has highlighted these statistics? Who has told the world that F1 is doing a brilliant job for them? If no-one says this stuff how can the sport to sell the success of its new engine formula? That leaves the way open for the naysayers and the vested interests to promote their negative messages about the sport.

One can forgive FOM for not bothering. Their sole interest and motivation is to work like hamsters on wheels making money for men in suits, who wave carrots at them.

But one cannot forgive the FIA for creating a better formula and then doing nothing about it. It is plain stupid. I cannot find a better term to sum it up, although if I was being more efficient I would probably just type ‘dim’.

They should be thinking the FIA is in Paris, Joe is in France and a little moonlighting is in order! Maybe even a weekly work plan and pep rally might be helpful to them Joe?

It looks to me like they have a policy of not being proactive, but rather only to speak when spoken too…. and then it better be as a last resort to defend the institution. You make fewer mistakes that way, but it is a failed policy when you have a message to get out and you blindly hope it gets out for you….. Let the races do the talking is not really a strategy, but between toenails someone appears to have fully justified that as a policy!

I fully agree with the new Formula being better and forward looking.
And maybe the FIA communications dept. know that, and using the old adage “Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door”, think they do not have to do any work now they have built that mousetrap, forgetting they need to actually tell the world it’s been built!

I agree it’s impressive that they were hardly slower while using 33 percent less fuel, but having visited the race in Shanghai myself (the first for me since the new engine formula) I must say there was something missing. I would call it the ‘wow’ factor. Since 1996 I have attended each year a Grand Prix and every time I felt this excitement and unbelief when I saw and heard them coming out of the pit boxes on Friday morning. It didn’t matter that you already knew from previous attendences how loud they sounded and how fast they looked: every time again you had this feeling “wow, this is Formula 1 anqd nothing comes close”. Now this year this feeling was completely lacking for me and that’s a real shame. They sounded like normal racing cars and they looked slower diving into the corner s. I will continue to visit GP’s in the future because I love the sport so much, but I would understand it if F1 looses interest from fans because of the new engine formula. No matter how impressive the statistics are.

These new hybrid F1 cars carry heavy toxic chemical batteries, a Turbo, Kinetic Energy Recovery systems and Electric Motor Generator Units…The F1 cars may be consuming 33% less petrol at a race track…but what about all the fuels, energy and raw materials consumed in the manufacture, fabrication and production of all of these “eco hybrid systems”?

It is clear that today’s ‘eco-friendly’ F1 cars actually consume much more energy “overall” in their manufacture and production compared to the V8’s and previous generation F1 cars…hence, “33% less fuel” is both misleading and erroneous at best.

“It is clear that today’s ‘eco-friendly’ F1 cars actually consume much more energy “overall” in their manufacture”

No it isn’t.

I’m not necessarily telling you that they don’t, but I am pointing out that there’s a logical fallacy in describing a raft of technologies and engine additions and assuming blankly that they use more energy to build. It’s not “clear” at all. It’s a valid point to raise and it’s a good question and it’s something that people like to ignore when handling “renewable” energy sources. And I’d be interested to see the results if any of the engine suppliers does a proper life-cycle analysis.

By the same token, the “33% less fuel” claim is not erroneous – misleading perhaps and guilty of lies of omission, but the only way it’s erroneous is if you quibble over the precise 2013 fuel weights.

not when you compare it with fuels, energy and raw materials consumed in the manufacture, fabrication and production of all the previous cars. compare like for like. Its like an electric car uses less fuel, but add on the manufacturing etc the power to recharge etc and it does’t look so good but then add those things to conventional cars and the electric car goes back to being more environmentally friendly

relevance in F1 isn’t about the actual savings on these individual cars, it’s how they translate into the real world cars that the general public drive every day.

Prior to this year, F1 had lost it’s relevance as a testing ground for new car technology, and therefore F1 lost the interest of the big car manufacturers.

The lifecycle of an F1 car is never going to be environmentally friendly, but F1 has in the past and should again in the future be the ultimate testing ground for new tech, and hybrid is the way forward just now. In this way, the non-environmentally friendly racing can have a very significant impact in the real world.

It is only through prototypes and testing that the technology can be improved to the point where the lifecycle of a hybrid is significantly better than the lifecycle of a more traditional internal combustion engined car. and historically there have been very few faster or more efficient methods of improving car tech than getting F1 to use it and develop it.

Currently Moto GP is realigning it’s future with less tech on the factory bikes, to reduce costs and close up the field. That is the right way to go, if one wants to keep fans interested. Frankly if you took 100 people and asked them if it was more important for F1 to be high tech, or more important to be close exciting racing, with the driver having to physically work hard, I would think at least 90 would opt for the lower spec, harder to drive machine.

MotoGP is all about entertainment and rider vs rider. The best will come to the top as always, but the series organizers are trying to ensure that there are more equal bikes available, and seats for new riders in the series. And they are addressing the issue of high costs, which works against new teams and new riders. This applies to F1 as well, in fact it applies to all areas of motorsport, where costs have reached absurdly high levels and various series are unsustainable or nearing that place. High costs and one make series have done incredible damage to motorsports in the last 20 years. It’s time to reduce the costs and allow manufacturing to become profitable so that there are new race car engineering companies created. It’s also time that someone like Frank Williams could enter F1 using a car he can buy an run. Making F1 teams build their own cars was the first step on the slippery slope to an unsustainable existence. As to MotoGP, the fan base is enormous and tv ratings were until BT got it instead of BBC. There isn’t anything Green about a MotoGP bike, but the fans love the series and there’s no drop off happening as there is in F1.

But the drivers are physically working very hard indeed. They have three power sources / partial power trains to think about, into every corner, all of which can throw a could of G’s into their body. It may not be any longer blood seeping through worn gloves from constant gear shifting, but you wonder if a trickle of blood might not seep from a driver’s ear, after some races. They start with a impossibility to get around the length as any normal driver might do. Then little things go wrong which we might take for being sissy “my DRS not working”, “No power!” which admittedly do sound a bit lame, but the context of such exclamations is much more involved because only the cockpit and crews know what is being yelled about usually. Compare with bikes, which I always admire though don’t follow, about the only advantage is a driver is sat down. On a straight, with fast following cars, each of which have different capabilities at almost every turn of the race.

If it was a video game, it has about all the major elements now, from first person shooter, through dexterous skill to strategy in minutiae like StarCraft or a similar game where everything is always in motion when you think you can rest. It most certainly has shrugged off any possible accusation this is WiiFit. Or I think anything that other classes of racing are going to think is a ability you can show innately, without exposure.

If I have a criticism, it is that I find it hard to watch the races, thinking I would understand it so much better in person, because there’s notably much more happening into each corner, even on a clear drive. Compressed corner angles do not deliver the reality of torque so well when you pull yards and not necessarily given in a nose first direction.

The problem is that F1 really badly needs explaining now. It’s kinda been through rehab, and come out in a whole new way, mindful of all that’s ben said and done. I find it strange to me, but it is not unreconstructed. I’m finding it very strange to watch. I’m being deliberately slow to form a opinion, for the very reason it looks to be evolving in a way which might not settle to a equilibrium. There’s enough variables that disequilibrium might become the norm. Now that would, butterfly effect and Lorenz attractors (Lorenz having studied weather patterns originally for his namesake ellipse) make a very ironic and elegant point to the environmental concerns. . .

The drivers actually have less physical input this year, than previously. Alonso & Hammy have noted that already, and others have mentioned it too. Rosberg says there is more work for the brain to do, but for the fan, they can’t see a driver’s brain working, but they can see the effort he is putting in with steering movement. personally I would ban flappy paddles and re-instate manual gear changes too, these used to be an area where a driver could make a mistake and either break the gearbox or the engine, or at least spin off.

I wonder if it is not already there in the signal chain, in other ways, as in big Canon and similar lenses often go hand in hand with optical correction on capture, but I wonder if we could benefit from some perspective correction, to take away as much of the normal effects of zoom angles, to try to present a adjusted “normal” perspective from the camera. The technology is there, and I know it could look very weird at first, but if we could get a better understanding of car movement now, I’d be very exited to see that. You’d have to oversample, but Sony sell 4K cameras that can pull insane low light, bang into the almost consumer bracket (A7S*) and so I think that the necessary crop could be pulled to “reset” perspective distortions and give us a idea what is going on better in the close chases.

Just on a tangent about high def and 4K video, our local PC World now has a row of new high definition screens, and though I have no idea how long it will take for the content and broadcast to come to feed these things, they truly impress me, and I was wandering around out of curiosity with my mum in tow, bit of time to kill, and she immediately asked the proper question: “can you choose what is on?”. Nothing gets my mum to ask a buying question about anything electronic. The Samsung screens we were gasping at held us for a fair while, long enough for me to actually explain in normal terms what is the chance of having anything to play or view on these new screens. F1 absolutely has lot embrace this. Use Sky if you must (I can hear rpaco gritting his tenth over Silverlight and I concur with anything he can moan about that) but get this reacing on these televisions. Our telly is the most inexpensive thing possible to be tweaked to reference” according to avforums tests, so is very good, and cost a tenth or less than these new ones, but here’s the thing: put the racing on these, I guarantee you got viewers you never had before.

f1yarn – The word ‘hybrid’ isn’t used because it isn’t a sexy selling point to the majority of ‘normal’ F1 fans.

For example, ticket sales for the British GP are lower than usual for this time of year which is unusual considering we have a very strong British contender in Lewis Hamilton for the Drivers championship this year.

Normally, I’d have to purchase my grandstand tickets for the British GP as soon as they’re available to the public (normally November)…but were close to May and there are still lots of tickets available for all the main setting areas.

F1 has now morphed into this eco-friendly, fuel-efficient, socially responsible “thingy” that is the total antithesis of what F1 used to be. Some people will like it and welcome it with open arms….and others will not.

The Silverstone circuit people (especially their PR people) aren’t exactly going to be shouting from the rooftops that ticket sales for the British GP are a “bit slow”.

Joe – go to the online booking page on Silverstone’s website and you’ll see the interactive map of all the areas on circuit – most still have tickets available which is very rare for the seated areas this time of year…oh I forgot – you haven’t had to purchase tickets for Silverstone for many a year…whereas, I have most years and therefore can make an accurate comparison.

To be fair Shane, it appears that Joe has to pay ridiculous sums of cash to be part of the F1 Media ( and travel costs etc ), to a level that I wouldn’t do….but then I wouldn’t spend my hard earned on tickets for Silverstone at such absurd prices either. If I see the British GP it’ll be on good ole BBC for free, but if it is a nice day i’ll probably go out and do something else for the day. After all it’s 50/50 who will win out of Hammy & Nico!!

– Cars with more power than grip?
– Faster in a straight line, but slower in the twisties?
– Cars sliding?
– Oversteer?
– Drivers differentiated by their car control, not their ability to manage an exhaust-blown diffuser?

Hybrid is a very sexy word to my view when connoted with say the Porsche 918. I see that cars such as that, however, are something of a rebuke to the current F1 world, no less from who has been ever so careful to not be seen to really be siting on the sidelines for years now. Before I start feeling as if someone with the necessary dollar denominated digits and friendly insurance agent can single headedly overturn the point of F1, by flipping their nose and saying they have as good and it will carry their sushi lunch back home for them in the trunk, the point is that F1 has about all the tools now of any auto engineering anywhere. At least as far as a solution for racing needs to go. I’ll get over the V6’s, despite I think that a poor choice aesthetically. I forget his name, sorry, but AUDI’s LMP chief in their documentary, notes how sound is a waste of energy. Surely the reason nobody used that argument when the comments started, was not just because of one person observing it as a possible design goal? Even so, we missed the chance to quip about how part time commentators ought to be more energy efficient, when returning from idle revs . . .

Sound is very much a part of motorsports. In drag racing for example, the sound of the V8’s passing you on trackside, leaves a huge impression of speed, as does the air being ripped out of your lungs! A friend of mine went to Donington with me a few years ago, there was a sportscar race on and a 7lt Marcos-Chevy was thundering around….my friend was so hugely impressed by the noise, that he said he felt it going through his whole body, every lap as it passed, that he still mentions it down the pub as one of the most intense feelings he has ever experienced at any public event. Noise is one thing, sound is a different concept. Back in the 80’s the ever passionate John Webb, started the Thundersports series, it was very, very successful…the clue to why it worked so well was in the series title.

I’m not deprecating the sound concern in any way. But when watching hybrid LMP cars go around, I can hear the drive train in motion on a way that really engages me. Their actual engines hardly make a squeak. There’s just lots of other interesting noise going on. Could it be that we have a audio production problem? Should we be putting arrays of microphones in suspension over the circuit? I think so much more can be done. The engine sound has been so dominant to date that I think it – sound – is simply neglected. Get some real audio engineers on the case. Who can mix a orchestra. It’s F1, for heaven’s sake. If something is wrong, chances are good it is only misapplied talent or oversight, not that the whole thing is suddenly broken. Oh I was up in arms also, at first, but it got me mad in a different way: I wanted to figure out why I was not hearing what was relevant to the driving. I actually wanted to bash the sound, because it upset me as being wrong. Then I just realised it is too long since I went to a race, and started scratching my head. I think this may be a problem functionally of the captive bernievision arrangement, whereas the broadcasters who are demoted to commentary and relay are teeming with engineers who could educe far better sound.

There’s a huge toxic waste dump nobody wants to unearth, where I think people are really scared to find out what has been pout into our bloodstream, and in particular our brains. I think the flip side joke is that Prozac in the water may not be a bad thing. There’s a classification of SSRI’s, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, and they go from mothers’ littler helper kind of Prozac like things to total coshes which nobody reply knows about except they got a trial where it seemed to help some people. My spellcheck tried to substitute “Somme” for “some people” sand we may be talking similar casualty rates. Lithium, sodium . . yup, basic things which change the chemistry our body uses to communicate. They have often been considered “barbaric”, but that is much more to do with past social attitudes for care. Actually today, I see most anyone affected by mental health problems of any nature more affected by the kind of care they receive than anything else. I normally would never talk about something which has affected just about everyone close to me at one point or another, but I changed my mind, because I am not sure now anyone can avoid being affected, short of filtering their own water supply, and that’s not filtering to make drinkable, but filtering at molecular levels for very complex molecules that change when passed. Maybe I should write something – if only I could really spend the time to get properly informed, if only I could start to wade through the expansive “sub literature” – meaning from non major publishers, often amateur sources, on the classification problem. If only I could get past being mad as hell over who I have lost to the pernicious side of these potentials for misunderstanding. Subject I’d go for seriously would be medical approval and classification. You get a drug, a chemical, and it may have a found use like epilepsy. Then someone finds it chills them out. Then someone approves it for use for people they seem otherwise unable to affect, let’s say this person is diagnosed with a serious thing which is very hard to prove, schizophrenia. I’ve a old mate who is schizophrenic. Now he’s extreme, and harmless honest to god, and irrepressibly funny, writes short stories how he gets taken away that would make a Greta composite short movie (why is it my Microsoft device spellchecks “great” as “Greta”? Do they know already my love for film? Fun typos abound.) but they also give all sorts to serious cases, until they rattle. So there is a effective reclassification. Try Sodium Valproate. Heavy stuff. Life saver if you’re in a pinch. But it has many reasons to be prescribed. Lithium, also. Know lots of talent on lithium. Or one womb I read, The Lion Of Wall Street” is the book, and easily overlooked, who opened up a whole field. Bloke called Richard Dreyfus, not the actor, but the man who pretty much popularized the mutual fund industry. Phenytoin, or rather they are a group of things, but he wrote his autobiography based on the change he got, basically he chilled and got his act together and bingo, was running the largest fun out there. Sodium Valproate falls under the Phenytoin class. That got spellchecked properly now! (I do wonder how fast these things are, must do a stack trace see what IE is up to. . . what a vast amount of data there must be about me) But try getting prescribed that when you are not diagnosed with any mental illness. I’ve tried. No go. Are we polluting? Are we risking ourselves? I do not know. I seem to cause headaches for medics who meet me. I do mean to challenge, because I get interested. I have however has the awful experience of someone inferring because I had a slip of pills that I must be a true mental case. Real reason? Awful hangover. There you go, booze considered environmentally dangerous. Too many MDs I have met parrot “you can never stop taking those, so I won’t give them to you”. Now that is amazing, considering the pharma game is surely feeding the “can never stop” illusion. But when do we stop? How do we stop?

If there’s a point to my comment, it is in agreement. Chemicals – drugs – are so often useful. Toxicity however seems to be too much a function of definition by impressionable human beings. I have one friend in particular who really could do with trialling a few things to chill him out. I don’t think anybody wants to risk changing the fact that he’s happy to be alive though when we spoke last he was crashing out under the belfry of his local church.

Oh, what drove me to comment, was the fact that environment activists have not caught on to the reflux of what we are doing to our bodies. Oestrogen and water for the pill is so old hat, fish populations mutating an dying and all that .. but that one is a huge thing. Why does anybody follow this through as to what could be going on? I actually think that Big Oil might end up getting a much easier pass, in terms of what we have done for our fuel and plastics, compared with what we got. At least when I think of everything petrochemical, I can look around me, and everything I touch is benefit of that industry existing. the scary thing is when you cannot argue the benefits. Does my effluent poison others at the expense of me getting to run a big fund? What’s the case with Ritalin and anything else my spellchecks will get right per trademark? Stories on reddit of multi state drives desperate to fill a script? Maybe. But not much in the way of real debate what the heck we need to do. One thing I found about health and drugs and especially mental health is that it is way beyond bi-polar, people are at one another’s throats when they care and when not waving arms.

Getting much more to my point: the thing to realise about lobbies and about prejudice and about especially anything controversial and subject to huge money, like oil and gas, is the best way to attack it is by comparison to other huge concerns but far from the madding field. Find out what is not being argued, and certainly with energy I keep stumbling on areas that nobody argues because we’re trading real benefits as fairly as we can already accept. I mean I think that the eco lobby actually do not want to overturn our world, I think that they are not prepared to undermine our way of life, but rather hit at what look to be sore thumbs sticking out. The real debate is too disturbing. So F1 takes a barrage. Fine. But don’t throw it back, try to make the other side know what the concerns are. This change to turbo / electric ought to have been something to open up this sport massively to the outside world. All the issues are there. Above someone points out there’s a lifecycle cost, that energy and rare elements and all that go into the wonderful new kit. Yes! All the newest stuff is going in, and we don’t know for sure what the holistic impact on life the universe and everything is going to be! Oh, embrace it. Invite some people in. The same magnets and bits and bobs that are optimised for a F1 racing car matter to someone running a dynamo from a irrigation stream in the middle of a paddy field, so they can turn on their cell and text their next “fair trade” deal terms. Some jobs like that may actually be being made possible by this new tech, just a random guess that some things are being pushed far enough on one scale to affect another scale.

I’m not sure how I like the new F1 myself. But it is really new. If I can get away with a crude analogy, it seems to me like moaning you never got any loving from your past belle and being reticent about your new one on the same grounds. Looks much he same to me, with some rather attractive 70s “Playboy” voluptuousness . .

I was more boringly thinking of the fact these cars can slide and be downright interesting for normal people to wonder at. I also think we’ve got a unusually good looking field of drivers. The combination is what you want: make it appear that drivers can wrestle with their cars, let a good looking lot settle in and start having some fun, and the opposite sex will follow. Now I might miss V12s as much as anyone who has the sad memory of hmm, think it was Berger in a swansong at Hockenheim , did he take the last V12 win? :…. I think we simply need to gloriously macho-insecurely but with a knowing smile, overcompensate, by getting this thing interesting enough to take out belles to, and solve the nostalgia by driving home in a Lamborghini. Something like that, anyway . ..

The problems of smog in China most probably stem from lack of interest in clean air as the rulers are more interested in economic growth. One suspects that they will twig the need to address the issue in the near future. Once they do, the matter will be controlled as it is in most modern countries. Yes, there are certain weather situations ( and volcanic eruptions ) that can interrupt the usual air quality, but China will get it sorted as we all have done.
Yes the technology of the new regs means that the new power units are very impressive in certain aspects. However, imho, they are not racing engines, and the series is losing appeal to even hardened enthusiasts, as it is not what F1 is or should be about.
One could see at Silverstone last weekend, what tech there is available to Toyota,Audi,Porsche, and impressive it is, also the engines sound different and make a much better sound than F1, and the cars actually look fast. In fact, in most ways, these new sports racers look better than F1 from an entertainment point of view I think it helps that the main factory teams use different cylinder configurations, differing size engines and differing fuel types..
I used to go to F1 races, I also never missed it on TV ( unless actually there for the race ), but over the last few years I have watched less of it, I reached a point around 2004-05, when I found I could miss a race and not be bothered. So, I ended up seeing ,maybe 12 or so a year, and then mostly the proper old events. So far this year it’s 3 out of 4 viewed, I don’t expect to view more than another 5 or 6 if that for the rest of the season, and I can catch up with internet race reports…read it in 2-3 mins, don’t have to suffer 90mins live or highlights.
Now I don’t feel in anyway that I need bow to anyone in my passion for motorsport ( which unlike some is definitely not restricted to just F1 ) so if I can find myself drifting away from F1, then I can see real problems ahead with others like me turning off, and with the series being unable to attract casual fans. This year’s Merc dominance ( and yes they are only doing their jobs properly ) will undoubtedly kick in a downturn on the audiences as it goes on grinding the rest into the ground. Lewis & Nico, good drivers, nice people, but 2014 like Senna & Prost 1988….no way, no chance.

I just saw, after writing the above post, that there are moves afoot to make F1 more spectacular. Good. Guess I’m not the only one getting bored! Not sure about some of the options, although restricting brake ducting, is not a bad idea in my book…anything that reduces aero influence is good news in my book. However, I see one other idea is to reduce race distance….what rubbish. If you can’t put a good show on for 90-120 mins, why the hell would it be any better over 60 mins or so?? Dumbing down in action again. Pathetic!

If you had a population qualified to manage lethal weaponary maybe you’d have a case for debate. It’s been proven you don’t , enough said. Enough of the paranoid justification already it’s 2014 not 1814!

I think GarryT has hit on something here.
Joe and a select few others are doing such a good job “communicating” F1, and all things F1 to us. Therefore, maybe the FIA are happy to let these professionals get on with it ….

I made a new friend in recent months who is a proper football nut, grew up at school with a player or two I could actually recognise, played local teams and all that, brilliant bloke. He’s mad for listening to TalkSport on the radio, enough so they certainly know him when he calls in, and he’s good value when on a rant on air. Anyhow the thing is his loyalty to that station, or rather his enthusiasm for a outfit which takes him, other loons, and what they are on about, seriously, is something we need more of than just Joe’s blog. I don’t think it should be strictly true that anyone must go through the career Joe has, to have a voice. The thing is that you have to ask, where are the voices? Who is making the impact? I mean it cannot be that Joe’s career path is the sole way into real journalism. There’s patently tons of goodwill and moral support, possibly liven practical support to be found if only someone asks, and I recall a few asking directly here, and certainly not being dismissed. There’s just this awful gap. I don’t even think it is a question of competition. I think magazines such as GP+ would do better if not standing out so alone. Only where are the talents, and I mean the young talent who can honestly say they’ve got 20 years they would never think twice about dedicating? We’re supposed to be in a revolution of online media and vox pop elevated by tools and peer review and by the chance to try. Is no one trying? I’m embarrassed, nay, scarred (! And by you all, obviously! ) by how long it took me to figure out how to write even a passable comment. It’s not easy. Who the heck is sponsoring this? I mean in the nurturing way that is necessary. I was blessed, though nobody who knows my style may think so, by having a business partner friend and mentor who wrung out of me some kind of intelligible language. I may be the hopeless case, but there is a need for some intervention right now in how this racing speaks for itself, and I think it is too easy to condemn the arrays of PR and corporate communications and all of that, because what is needed is a old fashioned kick up the backside from someone who commands respect. Is there no one from F1’s pantheon who could not take a year out part time to encourage some new voices? It is absolutely not about how you package a initiative, it is about whether you promote the people who are a part. Do that, and I think you solve many communication woes.

Sorry for my rant, I’m just a bit despairing. Joe and friends deserve to have a real retirement if they want one. This is deeper than just a communications SNAFU. Do schools get invited to bring students to try their hand to understand and report? I’d not know where to start looking, I mean if the FIA had something on, I wonder if I’d stumble on a page on their website even… and I truly dislike faked experience in education and sanitised exposure to what is a real business and real industry, so I’m sceptical of school and student initiatives, but I think F1 has a very thin skin, not a thick skin, when it come to people talking about what they care about. It just seems to be the corporate and PR envelope which creates a thick skin; otherwise I see a much more pronounced general wish to communicate individually than the impression is superficially given. Prizes ought to include “slumming it” on flights to and fro a race, seat next to Joe. Being overbooked on a sleeper from Edinburgh is how years ago I met a original ITN hand who was then with Sky news, who taught me more on a overnight train raiding his malt whiskey supply, than I had managed to figure out in years before or after.

You’re exactly right Joe. Compared to say Indycar, where I get a weekly email with news about what is happening in that series, the only email I ever get from Formula 1 is ads for sales on merchandise on their sparse online store.

I feel that sometimes the people running Formula 1 are massively out of touch with how the world works, and just don’t realise or care about how amazing Formula 1 is. It is an incredibly interesting sport on so many levels, and easy to promote if just the people running it could be bothered.

On a tangent I have recently moved to a country where I need Pay TV to watch Formula 1, and when I complain to friends about how much I pay every month to have Pay TV to just watch Formula 1 they all say, “can’t you watch it online”, to which I say “not legally”, and they are all in disbelief that the people running Formula 1 provide no online subscription option, when so many other sports do.

You don’t even have to compare it to Indycar. I get emails once a week from the British Touring Car Championship, with news about the series, interviews with the drivers, competitions and links to where I can watch the latest videos.

Would I like to see more interactivity? Perhaps yes. But surely Joe, as a journalist you should be the one reporting the news, not expecting it to be handed to you on a plate? After all, you’re the one with the Media Accreditation.

Do you think anyone at the FIA ever reads your posts Joe? I just worrie in case they feel insulted and revoke your FIA pass! But then again judging by the lack of promotion from the FIA I expect they don’t even bother to read about what the public think of their blue ribbon championship!

He’s not always right? The highly efficient internal combustion fossil fuel burning engine is the way of the future and justifies a sport poring billions down a dead end street? very sustainable, NOT. Do you know how efficient an internal combustion engine is? it’s a massively primitive device so why oppose billions of currency being channelled toward upping these efficiencies, how can that be bad.

Relevant R&D in F1 makes me proud to support it rather than being a Neanderthal comfortable with the expenditure of these resources resultant in the inefficient by product of noise only. Neanderthal may seem an offensive label but is really appropriate as it implies extinction that accompanies obsolescence, which is where sole Fossil fuel consumtion is at.

I’ve got no problem running vintage fossil fuel V12’s, V10’s, V8’s for fun, but hijacking future billions of r&d to not progress, who in therte right mind can justify that? It’s callked progress, the future…

Burning things for benefit is so fundamental to our evolution, our civilisation, eating, making home, carrying a torch for who we fancy (literally, from food to warmth to agility if transport to conspicuous consumption even if it’s a better camp fire than the next bloke) that you can reduce racing to just another form of burning things better. You’re bang to rights to make the neanderthal connection. I couldn’t quickly find which homo is the first known to command fire, but homo habilis is argued to be the first to use complex tools. That crowd were about a fair while before, if ingest my information right. If you think of it this way, you don’t need a “eco” angle, not the way the eco lot promote themselves anyway, to point out we’re just doing elementary life affirming things with a bit of racing. And the R&D side keeps up the welfare of subspecies of men who are less into overtly setting things alight and beating their breasts. So who’s not happy?

I don’t get all the negative comments about this years’ rules. It has always been the case that the drivers have had to manage the tyres and fuel. I’ve lost count the number of times the commentators have told us that the teams have “under-fuelled” the cars and the drivers have been instructed to drive accordingly. I even remember races in the past where cars have finished with the canvas showing! So what’s different now? Can someone enlighten me please?

But let’s be honest, the 1990’s are history. If you want to enjoy a Ferrari V12 or Honda V10 you can either buy the DVD’s or visit Goodwood.

So, are the current regulations the way forward, absolutely! And Joe is spot on, F1 as a whole needs to get their act together when it comes to proper PR.

The only thing the romantic in me would like to return from the ‘good old days’ is a bit more excitement, i.e. drivers going to their absolute limits. And with the increased reliability Joe described that should not be in the realm of possibilities.

About drivers going to the limits, since fuel flow rate seems to be the constraint of revs, and in turn that affects the sound, could not one race a year be designed to break the economy and in so doing break some engines? I’m only dreaming, but I guess that if they’re stuck at 12000 rpm in a tight envelope by design, you’d be able to break something interestingly. I miss things breaking… Argh, it’s late and I better rest my head, but I suspect that breaking the fuel flow limit would do some crazy things. Possibly crazy as in really should not attempt. I’d be happy just to hear some informed interview talk of what if. I found the explanation of fuel flow and revs and sound from questions transcribed in the FIA reports…. by reading the other site I like out there which is making a real effort. One of the points made by the team replies was how previously engine revs soared upwards. So, not explicitly said, was that the noise could well get more interesting as efficiencies are found, fuel or friction of however. Which is a interesting concept, if engine notes get sweeter the less fuel they may need to sip or effort make. Not saying that’s a sequitur, but it’d be a interesting thing if will happen that way. Maybe a race without fuel rate restriction could carry penalties for use, or points for saving, and have a different scoring system to translate back into championship points by order. That would certainly make me watch even the dullest of circuits.

Viewers with *very* short memories. The cars have also been slower than they are this year for about 97% of F1 history, but apparently this year is unacceptably slow. The cars have also been heavily constrained technically – in other words not delivering the full performance possible – since at least the early 1980s.

How many of the same people who are complaining think that F1’s ‘golden age’ was in the pre-ground effects, pre-turbos era of the ’60s and ’70s, with Ferrari vs Lotus and Tyrrell and the other garagistes, and drivers like Stewart, Clark and Villeneuve?

Less downforce, more power than grip. Isn’t that what the TWG set out to achieve years ago, in the interests of great racing? Job done. And, yes, if the cars have less downforce, they might be slower through the lap. Duh. Deal with it.

Thinking of the – was it a decade or so? – regs were meant to slash performance ache year, and the grid came back as fast, maybe after a race or two . .

The thing that does make me wonder, though, is how much accumulated knowledge ever comes back into play, e.g when tires came off the grooves, or grooves off the tires… The 90s were a huge hiring spree for most teams, I daren’t think why talent lurks around that never comes to our attention. When you say “job done”, there were so many raw problems to solve that attracted such a variety of talent that may have dispersed. Making a very big change is the sort of thing that attracts people to fundamental questions again. I think F1 needs a recent history to be produced, looking at it technically. Kids are clutching million pound compute devices in their hands now, on 1990s figures, something that cased me a awkward moment as I giggled with a huge grin that confused a “yoof” sat on a squalid project stairwell as I passed him by, as he fondled a new HTC device. Caused him to grin, also, when I explained myself and was obviously (ahem) not a loon old man with some strange personal purpose.. I must have been cultivating a Philip Baker Hall look, hat and all, see Hard Eight for gratuitous movie ref. Thing is, it doesn’t take long for it to all look different entirely, and look shockingly different. I think we’ve been all hankering after memories that many of us barely had – I was a babe in arms for much of what I hanker after, and even television snippets mean something more when so connected – and the internet has just about given vocal rise to all of this, and so there’s a false memory, or if not a false memory then a skewed timeline because we’ve inundated the electronic waves with comparisons always referring to a prior authority. As a result I think the 90s and into the millennium get a hard time inadvertently. Yet for everything that caused me to second guess myself and think again and detract from what was going on, I was fervent for almost all that time. I think the only thing that was broadly justified was a sense that the sport was being silenced by learned commercial habits. Surely F1 is grown up from that now? Oh, I forgot, reason for article. . . the one thing a commercial outfit is supposed to do right, PR . . .

Very true. I think the point the world can learn from this is that F1 has gone a lot more efficient and environmentally friendly without it actually making a blind bit of difference to the quality of the on-track action. i.e. being more efficient need not mean having less fun or less freedom.

However I’m not sure I can “forgive FOM for not bothering”. It’s in their interests to promote F1 just as much as the FIA should be, and the fact that they don’t is absurd. I believe Ecclestone is trying to damage F1 deliberately with his negative PR to lower the price for a buy-back and that’s a very dangerous game to play. If Ecclestone isn’t trying to buy back F1 then his damaging comments are just plain weird. I know historically Mr E’s public pronouncements always have an ulterior motive and he has always played the game well but am thinking he’s really started to lose touch with reality. About time the sport wasn’t run by an 83 year old …

Unfortunately – in this digital age – technology is generally regarded as something which merely allows personalities to interact and thus is viewed as a transparent framework which does not merit popular focus.

I couldn’t agree more. My interest in F1, aside from the sporting contest, is the technology and this year is fantastic for new technology but the details of which are only scantily available to the public. For instance do F1 car batteries use the same tech as my smart phone or are they developing new stuff?
At least FOM are now attempting to release some live data of the fuel use and efficiency during the race although I would love to see more info on the regenerated energy.

Whilst we may occasionally see fuel use (which was a surprise on Rosberg’s car when the telemetry was supposedly not working); we have lost sector times, weather stats and the lap chart from the official online Formula1.com timing pages. On the tv feed we have lost the gaps, KERS charge level, the G force.

And for heavens sake can they please move the subtitles from halfway over the top three times? It as it if were done by morons who have never seen a race on tv.
Everything is being dumbed down.

When I reluctantly pay £9.99 online for a day’s SkySportF1 channel via my nowtv box I note that it immediately says I cannot watch it online because I don’t have Silverlight. So I assume for those using MS systems that they can watch online via a Sky subscription. A huge miss there Bernie! An FOM online subscription could give a worthwhile tv feed and the missing data that we used to get for free.

Do we see heavy FIA advertising of forthcoming races? No none at all apart from the compulsory bit at the start of races. Do we see FIA documentaries on F1, WEC, WTCC? No they are not on normal telly here in the UK so is there any point in advertising? They used to be hopeful of getting you to the track, but they don’t care about that any more because it does not affect FOM or the FIA income if nobody watches at all.

The FIA is obviously now a secret organisation who remain deep below the surface. Their news feed/RSS on their web pages is almost entirely centred upon Rallying though they did make a decent stab at the F1 season preview. Did anyone read it? No because all things FIA lurk forty fathoms down, no light penetrates that far. It’s only “enthusiasts” (old gits) like me who read it, and then only when it has something interesting, but most fans don’t even know its there; along with all the race stats and figures to bore you to death, or feed upon if you are that way inclined.

It’s mad isn’t it? You’d think from the complainers that the V8 era only provided some Romantic ideal of racing and there weren’t ever dull races and entire seasons which were predictable. It’s not like it was 20 years ago, it was last year! Does the name Vettel not ring any bells with some people? Great we had louder engines! Awesome! That certainly ensured a decade without a single dull race didn’t it? Etc etc 😉

I don’t think there were many races over the last 4-5 yrs, where Mark Webber was forced to slow down for Vettel. It was more the case that MW was just a tad slower in most races. In the ones where he had it all clicked, he showed greater speed on the day than Vettel could manage.

Excellent!!!! This checkered flag issue made me think in many things, F1 has: telemetry, computer asisted race start, positioning systems accurate enough to detect a gap = < 1 seconds between many cars at the same time, 2.2 seconds pitstops, automated safe pit release systems, transponders, ERS systems, two way radio comunnications, space age materials, computarized blue flag systems….and a guy that waves the checkered flag at the wrong time…I don't like to mess with anybody's way of living but waving the checkered flag is the only job in F1 that I would never envy.

Just as an aside, in pro cycling, the officials ring a bell at the start of the last lap (of a criterium-format race, i.e., multi lap – not talking about a point to point TdF road stage) to warn the pack that the race concludes when they next hit the line.

If the bell is accidentally rung however many laps early, the race finishes one lap later. But if they forget to ring the bell, they don’t extend the race by a lap! lol…

Us pointy boot a’wearin hillbillies don’t require our better mannered cousins to make us all a’excited ’bout efficiency. We’ve got them Teslers and soon I’ll be a’leasin that Ford F150 pick up truck, which is made from beer cans. I’ve also heard that overall fleet mileage(not kilometrage) will be rising to meet the new laws. Dang Feds in DC.

Also, that video RedBull did with Daniel Ricciardo explains very well what the new formula is about. It communicates visually via CG(not center of gravity) to a younger audience, featuring a young face that the kids will pay attention to.

By which time I will be 97 years old and no one will have replaced me watching it on telly and going to races because they didn’t bother to promote it..
Dr Hartstein, your blog is superb, i’ve learnt so much from reading it, so thanks ! 🙂

Keep hammering the little fiefdom it’s justified and the sooner the FIA get’s honest and relevant the better for all. Especially if there is a a shakeup in F1 management due to current events or biology. I’s a good time to wipe the slate clean and any intelligent person knows 98% of the sport and all participants would be further ahead of the self important current few.

Time to bring the sport and FIA into the competitive reality of this century. This nonsense will likely end with the Bernie era but it shouldn’t take that if they had an iota of intelligence instead of ‘insulated privilege’ these folks would get operations in line with the efficiencies of the modern working world avoiding the inevitable need to clean house.

Apart from the sport ignoring it, it’s a marketeers dream for the engine manufacturers, especially Mercedes – 33% less fuel used to go fast! Or are they waiting until they are faster than last year? I really don’t get it.
From the sport point of view, Mr E never does anything that doesn’t eventually benefit him more than others, even if you can’t see it at the time.
But for the manufacturers not to use it as promo material? It beggars belief.

I thought that the function of team / sanctioning body media/PR types was to deny interviews to members of the working press? Do you mean they should actually FACILITATE communications, and in the process, help the sponsor thing happen?

Hey Joe, I would say I am a hardened F1 fan and the first race I was also kind of disappointed in the sound…but the second race I already noticed it a bit less. But I am always for moving forward and I fully agree that F1 needs to move into this direction and do it’s part towards a more sustainable future (I have been in Shanghai too and know what you mean….).

Is there anything we as fans can do? Because I am also very much gutted with the poor performance of the teams / FIA / commercial rights holders / race promoters on the part of telling what cool kind of technologie they are working with and indeed how much less fuel was used for just 0,5% of performance ‘loss’.

The technology is cool but we are where we were last year. One dominant car and everyone playing catch up. It’s great for merc but not so great for racing. The powers that be need to do more to make passing something that happens occasionally during a race. Like longer passing zones.
Is it me or is it that everyone is shifting at or before 12,000 rpm? Are they doing this for engine reliability? Wouldn’t an engine designed to spin at 15,000 rpm make more noise?
Nice article.

Post after post on forum after forum I keep seeing this gripe and it makes me want to bang my head against a brick wall. Not just because of its repetition, but because the person who has posted it doesn’t realise that it’s virtually always been this way.

Fangio was hailed as a driving genius. The fact that he was in the best car on the grid during much of his tenure and many races were what we would now call a domination does not detract from this. Alfa Romeo cars once won every single race in a season. Senna and Prost virtually froze out the rest of the grid in one season whilst at McLaren. Schumacher was in by far the most dominant car on the grid during his tenure as champion whilst at Ferrari. Mansell won his title when the Williams was by far and away the dominant car on the track. Lotus were a dominant force in the late 60’s and early 70’s due to their pioneering of aerodynamics. And whilst we’re at it, there were boring races in the 70’s and 80’s too. They weren’t all seat of your pants spectacles. It’s not just now that we’ve had so-called boring races (although I’d contend that if you knew where to look, then they’re not all boring).

What I’m saying is that the dominantion of one car/one team has virtually always happened, but it has not detracted form the achievements of the drivers I’ve just mentioned, or the teams, but most importantly, the quality of the races. What you should be taking issue with is the wholesale domination by one team over a period of years – yes I mean you, Ferrari and Red Bull – where no one is able to, and indeed in some cases is actually prevented from, catching up. Such as the decision last year to switch to 2012 spec tyres. after the 2013 spec shredded at Silversone. Only Red Bull wanted that. No other teams did because they built their cars around the 2013 spec tyres. Result – Red Bull won every race but one since the reversion to 2012 tyres. Many spoke of Vettels achievement of his run of straight wins as some high and mighty achievement, but if you look at the circumstances that led to that It was an absolute joke. Their form was patchy before this change. That is the kind of domination you should be protesting about.

As for the domination of one team throughout a season or part of it because they’ve developed better equipment (within the regulations) and have the best drivers – nothing unusual, and doesn’t detract from the quality of the racing.

I agree with some of what you say, as it is the artistry of the driver that counts for so much in motorsport for me. However I disagree that things have always been the same. Some seasons have been dominated, and of late Ferrari, Renault & RBR did that aplenty. However, there were other times when I could watch a race and while I knew that say Gilles Villeneuve had the worst car possible, there was always a chance of a win by him. JYS & Chris Amon had similar March 701’s, and had chances, but it was Lotus & Ferrari who did most of the winning, although BRM had a great win at Spa. So the thing is that one wants to watch on circuit or on tv, and before the race happens one wants to think that there are 6 or 8 guys with a chance. It’s not the same if you know it’s only 1 team that can win. I would make exception for 1988 as the enmity between Senna & Prost drove that season, nothing else. If they had been like Hammy & Nico, 1988 would have been utterly boring!

One can only hope that the legal outcome in Germany will enable breach of contract to be called on the 100 year deal.

However with the current incumbent in charge of the FIA, it is unlikely that any rise from the depths will occur. The kraken will stay snoring soundly dreaming of castles in Switzerland, the sonar will not be loud enough to penetrate the depths of tradition and grandeur, the doppler effect will remain confined to fuel flow measurement. (when common sense returns and the reg is changed to volume instead of mass) Meanwhile the PR periscope is firmly down and locked.

This is what I would like to see if the verdict of guilty comes in, just how did the FIA decide upon the 100 year deal? 100 years is not reasonable, especially for a once off payment at the very beginning. It just stinks of something very miscalculated, why did that happen?

The danger with the fuel-saving argument is that, by logical extension, if you are worried about fuel don’t have F1 at all. So you could say it is a Trojan Horse. Folks who did Latin and Greek at school know about that story.

Yes even in my secondary modern with technical stream, we heard of the trojan horse, no Greek or Latin ever knowingly passed our lips though. Fond memories of the GCE O level Metalwork practical exam. (drill vise through window by one of my classmates)

So who has highlighted these statistics? Who has told the world that F1 is doing a brilliant job for them? If no-one says this stuff how can the sport to sell the success of its new engine formula?

It often ends up being the fans and the keyboard warriors on their blogs who end up writing such things … they are passionate about the sport and want to tell everyone else in their social media circles how they feel about what they see every other Sunday 😉

You are brilliant Joe, I love your …..how can I put it…..No bullshit articles. But I do wonder how you manage to get a press pass every year from the powers that be? Whether it’s Mr. E or the FIA you always tell it the way it is. And for that I thank you sir.

“New technology is good for F1″. Absolutely, but I’d prefer to watch a motor race, not a computer race. Artificial means of providing excitement are not going to work.”

If you’re that precious about it, then surely you should have stopped watching F1 the moment Lotus put a socking great wing on the back of their cars at the end of the 60’s. I mean, you can argue that that is the absolute point when you can say racing became “artificial”, isn’t it?

Perfect Joe – I could not agree more. Huge PR and advertising budgets and yet this massivley important message is totally overlooked. Its not only idiotic, it’s irresponsible to let the sport miss this kind of positive news opportunity.

We are told that 450million watch F1 worldwide. A lot of them are saying “so what?” They could not afford the old technology for their car choice either. Hybrid engines are a feature – a sausage, the 7mpg attained is certainly a benefit, but to whom, if the technology does not immediately translate to personal transport?

With the old engines the sound was the sizzle, that communicated the asspirations of the sport well. That is why it is the most complained about aspect of the new regs, so the FIA & FOM are busy trying to get the engine suppliers to concentrate on making them sound different.

Fans understand what constitutes a race and a Mercedes walkover looks very similar to a Red Bull walkover. All efforts need to be made to ensure a level playing field can be established so new and smaller teams have a “sporting” chance. An effective cost cap is what is needed for the sport.

Governments, via taxation and emission controls are the ones most likely to ensure the planet becomes more green, but they are fighting a wind that is blowing strongly in the opposite direction.

I sincerely hope that the FIA make a bigger and successful effort in ensuring cost limitation through effective regulation. The referee rarely communicates in sporting events, it should be the promoter and players that do that by what happens on the pitch.

FIA – An outfit that “shakes down” F1 for a budget to play with so its privileged executive enjoy a piece of the so called “good life” in the F1 bubble. Who are these folks accountable to? Bernie in strange way because he has his hands on the purse strings.

Get that sizeable snout out of the trough and get your nepotistic fiefdom in order Mr Todt while you still have a marginal chance for a positive Legacy. The after effects of all those years wearing a jumper / sweater in tropical heat seem to have paralyzed your judgement.

That’s it. I’m going to see you this year when you come to Austin. Freaking brilliant piece of writing and spot on with you assement of the season so far.

I couldn’t have stated it any better. These teams of Engineering specialist that designed and built and now maintained these rockets have done an outstanding job give the short time. The sporting regulations have changed quit a bit from last year and you’ve seen the results. Very low actual mechanical failures so far, awesome.

I fell in love with F1 years ago, with my dad, watching pretty much one race here in the States – Monaco. The Engineering skills and the look of the cars is what has kept me here. Now I have a track 23 minutes from my front door.

It’s my suspicion that, not only do the F1 powers favor Ferrari to an unethical and unjustifiable degree, but that it’s from Ferrari that they model their world view. Ferrari as a carmaker doesn’t spend a penny on advertising, its attitude probably expressible as “We’re Ferrari. If you don’t know, you don’t matter. Be ready to shell out big money if you want us to even look in your direction.” An attitude I see as mirrored and inextricably entrenched in F1 when it comes to selling itself. I believe “supercilious” is the right word.
The Indianapolis 500, once thought an unassailable American institution, squandered a century of exalted status and is now bagging groceries as a result. That was once thought impossible, as seemingly thought now for F1. We’ll see.
Good to keep non-relevant political hot potatoes outa this blog. Don’t wanna get a lot of people started on ’em, including me. Things could get real hostile, real fast.

Don’t know what it’s like where you live, but over here it is not just crazed hillbillies who have managed to equate “freedom” with selfish anarchy… it is also a bunch of otherwise intelligent people who see misinformation conspiracies behind any and all information they don’t like the sound of… and we have major media industries dedicated to keeping them ignorant and paranoid.

As for the FOM, I simply don’t understand how you can say that they can be forgiven on the thin basis that their motivation is greed. The fact that we can understand someone’s motivation doesn’t mean their behavior is excusable, else every prison should be emptied of all its residents. What FOM is doing is destructive wealth extraction, plain as day. The simple desire for profit does not excuse all flavors of profit-making… unless you believe the concept of responsibility is dead…

Err yes. FOM and mates wish to extract as much money out of F1 before the “partners” wake up.

We might look at F1 teams as if they were in three leagues.

League 1 are manufacturers who know that FOM screws them but earn enough of a kick back at the end of the season to be silent about the deal. Some participants in League 1 are owned by a bigger business; they are companies with an international reputation and it would be embarrassing to admit that a tiddly organisation like FOM bosses them around. Most League 1 teams have another business to pursue if they lose interest in Formula 1.

League 2 comprises manufacturers who were in League 1 or wish to be in the future. They can’t make a fuss because they don’t have power. They make do with the situation because they are F1 racing teams who do not have a business to go to beyond F1.

If FOM loses a team from L1 or L2, its brand is seriously devalued. If there is no middling team providing slots for new (or re-inspired) drivers or challenging for the top spot, F1 loses appeal. I really don’t understand whether Torro Rosso exists to “bring on new drivers” or to sustain the concept of L2 teams as potential race winners.

League 3 is for survivors. League promotion is not progressive; a team can fall from L1 to L3 rapidly, but the Up button on the elevator is not responsive.

Joe, I totally commend the technology that the teams have created now but they really ought to do something about the noise of these engines! they sound like motorbikes, just due to the noise only the cares dont seem fast enough even if finishing time might suggest otherwise.

Maybe they have good audience research, are well aware of their demographics and know that the message will be wasted or not picked up by the media, whereas a good old fashioned crash will get on the TV news.

Come to think of it , the only non-motorsport media I know of that ever seems to pick up on F1 or Le mans engine tech in detail is Wired.

Sometimes the local paper will have a low detail puff piece when the race is in town, but the geek mags tend to cover it at the start of the season in detail.

So if they did release an efficiency press release after the Chinese grand prix, who would print it apart from the local Shanghai press and the dedicated F1 sites? (Who are not the target of the message anyway, since the fans that go to the dedicated F1 sites already understand the sport and its engines)

It would need to be a very slow news day, because its not a very exciting story next to rollover crashes, the rich and the beautiful and Monaco, corruption scandals, team politics, and driver feuds and tantrums.

Considering Motorport is usually last in the sports news hierarchy (Depending in your country First: Football , Football, Football, Rugby, Tennis, Cricket, Golf , Cycling, Horse Racing Other Sports, Last: Motorsport), it would be very difficult to get that press release interesting enough to get a mention, particularly if its going to be the same message after each race.

Probably the last motorsport efficiency story to gain some wider media attention and public interest was the Delta wing, but the story was greatly assisted because it looked so wildly different
A data table of F1 fuel efficiency gains vs lap times isn’t that interesting to the wider public.

F1 and other series used to garner plenty of press reporting. It is a measure of how badly mismanaged by all from BCE to FIA to Teams to Drivers, that the level of reportage has fallen to almost extinction. The sport seems to be run in a way that actively does not want proper racing and proper driver involvement, but just celeb this celeb that, penalty this penalty that and now it has jumped onto the Green bandwagon just as that passes by on the road to nowhere…..
I see Marussia are pleading for the sport to react to costs which will drive the teams out of business, and frankly, I think it likely that it will take 3 or 4 teams collapsing before any of the big teams or the FIA-Bernie, wake up to the reality of the situation.

For all his rights and wrongs, I admire BCE for his sheer will to succeed – and that he has facilitated jobs for thousands of people. I am otherwise, 100% in agreement with you Damian. I think think the big teams are probably fully aware of the situation, but couldn’t give a damn; they will milk what they can from F1 while they can. Now that F1 has lost its racing spirit & soul, as you correctly observe imo, for them it’s all about ego & money, F1 is just a convenient flashy means to an end. If F1 doesn’t fold through mismanagement, the Greens and/or lawyers will kill it.

Well I too admire Bernie for his many abilities, although as a human being, he comes across as mostly odd. I think in retrospect, with F1 he had a pretty easy target, as the team owners of the past were only interested in designing and racing, money wasn’t that far up the list of things needed except for supplying the funds to race. Also, they raced in many series back then. Lotus had works F1,F2 & F3 teams, and dabbled in Sportscar racing, FF1600 and Saloons too. So there was money from all those sectors which helped fund their F1 activities, of course building cars was useful too!
When Bernie offered to help them all, if I recall it correctly, nobody much was interested in what he was going to do, and just agreed to sign him up. Good short to medium term move, very bad long term move!
He has created the circumstances for a lot of employment, which from a certain point of view is good too. However, he also helped create the huge circus that is now F1 and in the process, did everything he could, to downgrade all other motorsport that might take up viewing time, so other forms of motorsport have suffered hugely, and thousands of jobs have been lost at the likes of Brabham, March,Reynard,Lola and many many others, as well as all the attendant support businesses that used to supply them, so on balance, he hasn’t done anything to help employment in motorsport, just in F1.
I don’t think Greens or Lawyers will kill it off, my view is that fickle marques will end it, and the collapse will hurt a lot. However on the bright side, it just might lead to a renewal of what was best in the sport, and a revival. This is a sport with a huge and exciting back story of over 100 years. We as fans are probably the most passionate followers of any sport on the globe, and we usually have other sporting passions too. The big problem is that people are wanting to fit motorsport into a box of ” modern ways “, so they want to dumb it down all the time, because they think it does not appeal to a demograph that struggles to have the attention span of a Mayfly. This is seriously wrong and demeans young people. The youngsters they want to attract, will not stay longer than 15-20 minutes at a time, and they are also unable to watch Football, Rugby, and forget Cricket and Golf, as they cannot sit and watch anything that takes so long, as it does not provide instant gratification.
Now, I am sure that this will cause an outcry, and no I’m not saying all young people are the same, although 1 out of the 5 that are my kids, does have issues with attention span….What I’m saying is that the money men are targeting the wrong audience, because of the idiot view that only those under 30yrs are worth looking after…and the funny thing with F1 is that it doesn’t even look after that demograph, the one that wants mostly information of an electronic nature and is more interested in sector times, than in who is running 7th 8th and fighting over it.
Rant over…well not rant but just fed up watching the sport I dote on being systematically destroyed by greed and stupidity!

Yes, you’re not wrong, but I didn’t specify motor sport jobs pers se; there are many more from other sectors whose contributions directly or indirectty put “cars” on the grid.

I think the biggest challenge F1 has is in clawing back the appeal and charisma it had (across the generations) before the IT and Green revolutions kicked in, both whom now dictate how the business is run

Yes I agree with you Ben. I did mention the peripheral businesses in motorsport, many of these have sadly gone because the whole emphasis of the sport was titled toward F1 which was wrong. Getting fans in depends on getting good racing and sensible rules back.

It is odd that they have made such a big call to introduce completely new engine regulations in the name of efficiency and progress then sit quietly and be slagged off because they don’t sound cool enough. The Australian GP coverage was a great example. All I remember from the local coverage was Alan Jones bitching about how crap the new engines sound, Tom Clarkson saying how quiet they are and Greg Rust politely agreeing with everything ‘the experts’ were saying. None of them mentioned the fuel efficiency or any of the great improvements the regulation changes had introduced.

Joe, I’ve been meaning to bring this up for a week or two now, but you’d not written anything about the media side of F1 so I kept schtum waiting for something faintly relevant.

Canal+ in France have taken to showing a rather bizarre little highlights package a few days after each grand prix. It’s a show about half an hour long called “On Board : au coeur de la formule 1” (“On board: At the heart of F1” for those of you who don’t speak French) and as the name might suggest it’s based on on-board footage.

Saying that it’s “based on” is however a wild understatement. It is nothing but in-car footage. The highlights of the race, all shown from the front and rear mounted on-board cameras with only the engine noise and the team radios to listen to. No commentary. There are occasional text graphics to explain the context and as often as not their director chooses to show a duel from the point of view of the next car behind (the end of Bahrain followed Massa vs Vettel from Bottas’s camera for example).

And it is fascinating.

Nothing but watching the race from as-close-as-possible to the driver’s eye view : the helmets swinging back and forth, the careful steering control, the clipped apexes and the attempts to outbrake rivals.

Such a simple “obvious” idea! Half a hour seems a bit stingy. Makes me wonder if it’s a loophole in a contract that allows them to use the footage, a quota or something, and how the decision for such a show. It’s always been silly how little footage gets used. Official season reviews are my pet hate. Let someone run the repeats, or make their own full length review. Let it be as long as we can watch, for heaven’s sake… why is it so many things that would make hard core fans happy are seemingly trivial and yet never happen? Could not race repeats have live radio, for example?

It seems to me that while FOM has changed the way in which we watch F1 on TV and brought it from the dark ages into the 90s (sadly it has stalled there), the overall attitude of FOM and the FIA is still wedged in the 60s ideals of divide and conquer, circuits hosting their own event on their own backs, and the F1 teams as lone gangs of sporting hobos, there to perform and nothing else.

FIA/FOM have an interest in everything, from the circuit’s struggles to the team’s digestive biscuit budgets. Marketing and PR is such a big part of that and yet they do nothing. And in other areas too.

If FOM thinks they are making money now, it is nothing on what could be done if they viewed the F1 business as a actual entity that needs overall control rather than several piggybanks they all hit with different size hammers.

The more I think about it, FOM actually has too much control. The FIA should be the overall boss, charging FOM to run it’s sport at a small profit. The FIA should make the megabucks and pass it down to member clubs, apporved circuits, teams, marshals, kart racers, Euro NCAP and anything else it sees fit. FOM’s business should be making the most money out of the sport for the FIA, of which it gets a cut.

Theoretically that is they way it should work now. But we all know it really doesn’t!!

Could Mr Stroll liven things up on the PR front if his bid for Lehman Bros Delta shares is accepted? 15% according to Sky news, that’s more than Bernie’s share. The remaining share percentage of CVC must be nearly down to 15% by now. (or not)
Still things are not what they seem in terms of shares in F1.
But he may have more in common with Bernie’s wives club being a fashion tycoon. though to be fair he seems to know what he wants in the way of Ferraris, having laid out US$27.5m for one last year.

Speaking of relevance, one of F1’s major suppliers, Renault, has done a very thorough life cycle analysis between battery electric and both gas and diesel versions of its Fluence car. The results offer good insight into why they were pushing for technology change in F1.

The analysis does not look specifically at hybrid solutions like the new F1 power units, but the move towards electrification and efficiency in general seem well supported by the conclusions.

More specific to Joe’s argument, the politics of F1 really seem to retard efforts to get the message about the new technology out there, though harmony in this respect would seem a little out of character for the sport. How many of its major stars had to die behind the wheel before the issue of driver safety got everyone to really support tackling the issue?

Compared to driver safety, F1’s current lack of communicative cohesion regarding the new technologies doesn’t rise to the level of crisis.

F1’s politics do remain frustrating, but one way or another the technology is being talked about. Joe and others, along with the impressive performance of the cars themselves, do seem to be penetrating through the worst of the inflammatory rhetoric that attached itself to testing and the first couple of races.

This all seems like a louder version of Top Gear where Prius bashing has evolved into McLaren P1, Porsche 918 and Ferrari LaFerrari hybrid love. Sometimes the family just has to have it out before dinner can proceed.

No team is going to put themselves intentionally into the shitstorm they would receive by trying to say “hey look, we (F1) became a tiny percentage more efficient while still burning through literally tons of oil and fuel within just an hour and half! Plus we all flew here, a bunch of us first class wink wink, and either flew, drove or freighted tons and tons and tons of cargo half-way around the world (lots of it just so that a bunch of rich corporate mucky mucks could sip champagne in a nice room), and did I mention, all for an hour and half of privileged entertainment! Aren’t we great!? Aren’t we…??”

No, sorry Joe, it’s a ridiculous thought and the simple reason it wasn’t communicated is because the very highly experienced and skilled communications teams and contractors are in fact not idiots, but very, very good at what they do and bringing up something like this, especially in Shanghai, of all places, where it would be instantly spun into headlines about how wasteful F1 is and look, here in Shanghai, the air quality is a perfect example of that wanton disregard for such waste.

I am a huge, long term fan of formula one, but am in no way blinded to the fact of how horribly humungous it’s globe trotting carbon footprint is and how at odds that is with my own personal opinions. I know many, many fans and non-fans feel similarly and I’d prefer not to be reminded of that fact, and prefer the world wasn’t reminded (especially when many of the races are at least somewhat tax payer funded) of that fact, by a some dumb false marketing about F1 becoming more “green”.

Now spin it into talking about how much more relevant the trickle down tech is to road going cars and how that when multiplied by millions of vehicles will work towards helping lower overall global emissions, then great! Oh wait, that is what they are talking about… hmmm… these communicators seem to know what they’re doing don’t they.

“how horribly humungous it’s globe trotting carbon footprint is “, and,assuming that you’re a daily driver Mike… over a year, how does that compare to the carbon footprint you leave? How many hours a year do you spend at the wheel? You may not drive of course.

Where I live the County Council & Forestry Commission have instituted a county wide policy of “slash & burn ” for local woodlands,forest, & planning for mineral extraction. The flip side is that they are converting all the wood land that they burn ( yes they set light to most of it & I expect the rest goes to biomass away from here ), into heathland, as that is what was supposed to be here in Ancient Times!!! Now, the last I heard, trees were vitally important in combatting Co2…..in fact around 30 years ago, it was reported that an area the size of Wales was being de-forested every year in the Amazon Rain forest and that as a result there’d be no trees there by the year 2000…..well that didn’t happen as yet. But the idea of changing things ( as in the Green regs for F1 ) just seems to me to be a case of ” let’s fiddle with it and pretend we have somehow saved the planet! ” which is somewhat ridiculous in my view. As to the hybrids now being used, I would predict that when Merc & Renault find they are not creating much interest, but are costing them vast sums to no useful purpose, then both companies will suddenly find good reasons to leave F1, Merc because they will have won everything, Renault because they have won everything, and their Boards will find some other place to spend the dosh saved from F1. As to Honda, well they don’t always make the best engines, they have had issues in the past, and I see no purpose at all in Ferrari racing such small engines. The return of real Horse Power can’t come quick enough for this fan!

A minor comment, but ‘literally tons of fuel’ in this context means 2.2 tons across 22 cars (assuming they all finish, which is almost never the case). While the statement is true, it’s perhaps a little hyperbolic.

The point about transport cost is an interesting one. It applies to all international sport to a greater or lesser extent, albeit F1 must be at the top end because of all the ancilliary equipment.

When you say “privileged entertainment”, is not all entertainment privileged?

I take issue with the inevitability of loosing to counter spin. That surely depends on how much you care to engage to ensure a message gets through. Do you not want to provoke the wrong kind of attention if you think you can capably counter prejudiced opinions from non specialists writers who could quickly be shown to be out of their depth? The MSM in the UK relied too much on very replaceable supply of words . : .

And this is why I get ants in my pants the way some in the F1 media push their words to mainstream press. I think they’d have a less easy sell, or one would, if they didn’t pander to unworthy nonsense, which I think is actually how F1 is seen by editors. I don’t think F1 is taken seriously.

It’s not easy to break out of a niche, though. The other day I was talking of budget for a serious charge on a public in print media, talking about Wired magazine, and budgets of millions. The new London Live television channel apparently has less budget than I’d like for a magazine. That may just indicate they’re being most to play a longer game, and Lebedev, who bought the London Evening Standard and The Independent newspapers does nor seem a silly man. But I’m yet to figure out what he is actually doing with those titles. If you wanted only a base in media, not with a immediate purpose, you’d be frugal. If you had a real axe to grind, as Ole Rupe always had, you would be more aggressive. I think if you wanted to push F1 into mainstream media to the extent US series manage, you’d have to be in the axe to grind camp. It’s harder than “just” getting a broadcast channel and hoping people tune in. That said, a commissioning editor’s job with a full budget to fill a year of real racing writing would be choice. Please someone do this before the last generation of those grown up with Formula One pass. Even a noble failure would do wonders. I confess though that my dream is a model of post war Cahiers de Cinema. I dream of what a publication of note, of substance, of record, would elicit even in letters to the editor from voices who might otherwise remain silent.

Having said all that, I have just figured out the point I was aiming for: having a publication of record, a serious journal, goes a long way to curtailing nonsense debate. Especially if technical and politicised, like fuel and energy. Because then other journalists can refer to that and quote sources to correct poor reporting elsewhere. If you write on medicine for a newspaper, would you not consider The Lancet a source? Provide them a source. Establishing a journal of record goes a long way to legitimising the understanding and views of a profession. F1 ought to start convincing of the legitimacy of a developing formula, not take flak for they fact possible fans are confused what’s going on.

But, agreed, slinging out press releases as single shots is not enough.

I just realised it may be lost in my long prose, what I mean by dreaming of Cashier de Cinema equivalent publication for formula one. The story of that magazine is really worth study, in how a cadre of agitants or pigeon holed anti establishment real participants in the game they wrote about, let in a debate that soon nobody could ignore. As in let in by opening the shutters in a dusty barn. It didn’t matter who does. Now I fear we are incensed by the mere thought crime of overture. (decidedly not a automated spelling mistake, that word, overture) It matters upon what the light is shed, even while those inclined discuss the existential quality of said light. It matters it is a experiential process, not a exclamatory issue or a provocation to capitulative weariness of puerile intellect. No publisher is gracious. It’s sad that the caricature of a publisher even has now faded. Publishers have forgotten even self parody, because that assumes self knowledge. But the effect of actions can be gracious, no mater the ugliness of the gesture. In the insignificant microcourse of private debate, we all know the idea of self deprecation. It has become a anachrony, a tool purely to be heard above the most base opinionaton, of demand of self adulation, in a comment , in a blog, those in elevated social status claim laisse faire in whole realms of immoral life by their evocation of self referential mea culpa, knowing one’s failings has become tawdry, banal, a playground taunt, “see how I know myself, and all you stand for is still unworthy, for I have never considered what you say”. Art, or to my view the understanding of higher ambition is about self evisceration. A generation before I was born, the idea, if not a idealised purpose sui generis, that positive political disruption could be caused by serious thought rather than trivial distraction, was still current. I feel I even have to define political, by making a motion towards real politics affecting all for good or bad, not interest groups or factions or intellectual idolators, ménage a trios with their ids and egos barely cognisant of what a intimate relationship with the world might be.

Apologies for another clarification: self evisceration in what I mean above is not display of that act, it is communication of what you find. There’s pain in love, but to write of the pain become beguiling, too easy to my mind there being a imbalance of poetry and prose because it seems there’s too little understanding of the actual pain, just bipolar outcomes. My pop would cover that by saying how there was a man banging his head against the wall, and a passer by asked why, to receive: “because it’s so nice when I stop.” We all like apparently simple conclusions. I dare to think that the best conclusions, especially following difficult times, are grossly oversimplified and consider not the suffering enough, as it translates in feeling. I feel I shouldn’t in some self censored way, I shouldn’t; but for all the reminiscences, I’ve not read any mention of AdSS’s religious beliefs. To me they explain a lot more than I would see just from his racing. The purpose of a cilice is no to show that you may bleed. Just as strength in a man or woman is to express compassion as you accept what you endure. There has been to my mind a great loss of human charm and appreciation for life in the way common language. I think that is actually a reaction to the apparent monopoly churches and preachers may have been felt to have over such expression. But a man had a voice that changed formula one, without preaching. I may be a bit biased, because my first blush of love was for a Brazilian girl whose life ended so prematurely in accident in meaning to set a speed record of a different kind, but take away the institutions and think of what power individuals have. They do not have power in being petty and snide about themselves, bringing the other lower, bringing the reader lower, in print, so as to score points.

Cilice is a tourniquet to cause laceration used by some catholic observers to contemplate their physical / spiritual balance. You may find more connotative explanations because it was made a feature of a character by Dan Brown. But the idea of suffering deliberate or otherwise in spiritual exploration is so embedded in universal psychology that it’s good not to consider it as a abberative idea instead of a convenient metaphor. Any overtone or undertone is not intended, if any found must be attrib. to this sometimes roman catholic boy who sometimes wonders for a non observant just how deeply some ideas run.